Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 8/04/2005

Dear Kallahniks,
It was a joy to share with you the wonderful Kallah. I am writing to pick up on the announcements you heard of the new independent status of The Shalom Center and to ask for your help in getting started.

(Also in the P.S. I want to let you know how remarkable an unplanned miracle was Imam Fuad El-Bailey's blessing of us in the service just before the smikha ceremony Wednesday evening. More a miracle that most of us knew!)

As announced at the closing ceremony, Reb Zalman will chair the Council of Sages from several religious and spiritual traditions and communities that will help to guide our Shalom Center work.

We are committed not only to point out the dangers that our world now faces, but also to work on the alternatives of healing.
We are starting with two grants from ALEPH one to work on its Sacred Foods project and one to work on "Beyond Oil."

But these will support only the skeleton of an effective Shalom Center. To do our work of healing from Philadelphia, we will need your help from all around this wounded world.

We need start-up support right now. A gift of $180 or $360 would be a great help.

For many of us, the best way to help may be to arrange a gift of $18 or $36 a month. You can do either of these by clicking to
our Home Page and then clicking on the Donate Now button. These gifts are tax-deductible.

They embody our commitment to renew the world that is reborn on Rosh Hashanah. As the High Holy Days approach, they can help us write ourselves into the Book of Life.

The Shalom Center will continue to work on the "God's October Surprise" campaign that is bringing together Muslims, Christians, and Jews in celebration and action to heal the world, through the confluence of holy days this fall — and again in 2006 and 2007.

Through this effort we are both learning our way into the "deep ecumenism" Reb Zalman has taught, and drawing on spiritual energy to heal the searing pain of Mother Earth, as he called for us to do in his Thursday shiur.

The Sacred Foods project will take "eco-kosher" from a conversation into action, and will broaden it from a Jewish to a multireligious effort.
"Beyond Oil" looks toward the dangerous and destructive addiction to oil that already plagues our country and our world, and will get much worse as demand for oil outruns the supply, pushing prices to unheard-of levels.
Spiritual communities must be an important element in ridding us of this "social addiction," and Jewish renewal must play its part, both to heal the world and to help our own households and communities cope with the dangers of economic upheaval.

On the weekend of November 4-6, Rabbi Sheila Weinberg (a crucial leader in teaching Jewish meditation) and I will co-lead a course in "Tikkun Ha'Lev & Tikkun Olam: the Relationship between Heart-healing Meditation and World-healing Social Action." I hope many of you will come. Please call 1800/398-2630 to reserve a place.

When the National Public Radio interviewers at the Kallah asked me why 700 of us had gathered, I responded:

The world is going through an enormous universal earthquake. All of us are deeply shaken. There are two ways to cope with this earthquake. Some try to hunker down, looking desperately for a rigid, stable point. Some learn to dance in the earthquake. We have come to learn to dance.

Please help us help you to dance with skill, with love, and with joy.

Shalom, Arthur

P.S. 1 - About the Imam: it was his congregation whose kindergarten some kallahniks went to help decorate, and his congregants went to pick up some of our folks who got stranded at the Pittsburgh airport. The Johnstown area shul knows them well. He and his family had come to Kallah dinner, but mentioned nothing about coming to the ordination service.
The rabbis who were going to join in the smikha were sitting down front. Reb Shefa Gold, who was sitting next to me, whispered that she wasn't feeling well and needed to rest. As she passed the last row on her way out, she noticed the Imam just getting ready for his late afternoon prayers.

They talked, and the idea arose of his blessing our event and the new rabbis. He said at once he would be glad to, and Shefa came running back down the aisle to ask what to do. I checked with the new musmakhim and with Reb Marcia, who all said this would be wonderful. When and how? Reb Yitz Husbands-Hankin suggested the "Hashkivenu" prayer, with its theme of "Spread over us the Sukkah of shalom."

The connection was a miracle; what the Imam then said and did was beyond miraculous, because it was at the height of human caring and respect.
As Reb Shefa said later, "Now I know why I felt I had to leave!"

P. S. 2: Another powerful way to help The Shalom Center help us all is bringing my beloved Rabbi Phyllis and me to lead a Shabbaton for your synagogue or campus, or to speak at a conference you are planning.
Phyllis teaches the art of deep listening as she did at the Kallah, and I can speak on the healing alternatives we need.

Together we can lead prayer and Torah study that embodies both healing of the heart and healing of the world. Together we can tell the stories that embody tikkun olam, and show people how to give new life to their celebrations of the seasons and of their own life-changes.